Find the Best Food for Your Dog

Tell us your dog's breed, age, and activity level — we compute real daily calorie needs and filter every dog food we've verified down to the ones that actually fit, ranked by real cost. Not a quiz that ends in a recommended subscription — every check traces to a label field, same as everywhere else on this site.

Breed

Don't see your breed or have a mixed dog? Type "Mixed / not sure" — size is then computed straight from the weight below.

Weight

68 lb

Age

Activity

Health concerns

Recipe attributes label-verified, not medical claims

Your Labrador Retriever (Large, moderate activity) needs about 1466kcal/day 727 foods fit ↓

The results

Foods that fit your dog, cheapest first

Filtered by life stage plus the checks you selected above — the exact same criteria as our best-for rubric pages and every product page's fit checklist — then ranked by cost per 1,000 kcal, priced foods first. See the cost calculator to compare any specific food by weight alone.

727 of 1112 foods fit your Labrador Retriever.

FoodMatches$/1,000 kcal$/day · $/mo

Amazon prices shown as of 2026-07-11 – 2026-07-17. Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.

The method

How we compute your dog's calorie need

Standard veterinary nutrition formulas, plus one activity adjustment we're explicit about. Full derivation on the methodology page.

Step 1 — breed sets a starting point, not a constraint. Picking a breed fills in a typical adult weight (the midpoint of the AKC/breed-standard range) and a typical activity level — both fully editable. Your dog's actual weight, not its breed, drives every number below.

Step 2 — daily energy need. We convert weight to resting energy requirement (RER), multiply by a life-stage factor (puppy 2.0× · adult 1.6× · senior 1.4×) to get daily energy requirement (DER), then apply an activity multiplier on top: 0.9× low · 1.0× moderate · 1.3× high. This is a population-level estimate — individual dogs vary, sometimes by 20% or more.

Step 3 — filter, then rank. We keep only foods whose AAFCO statement covers your dog's life stage and that pass every concern check you selected (large-breed puppies additionally require the AAFCO growth-calcium check, no exceptions), then rank survivors by cost per 1,000 kcal using your dog's computed kcal/day.

Daily energy requirement (DER) RER = 70 × (weight in kg)^0.75
DER = RER × stage factor × activity factor Stage factors: puppy 2.0 · adult 1.6 · senior 1.4 Activity factors: low 0.9 · moderate 1.0 · high 1.3 Cost per day cost/day = (DER ÷ 1,000) × cost per 1,000 kcal 1112 dog foods checked against your filters; 125 named breeds in our reference dataset, plus a weight-driven "Mixed / not sure" fallback. Not veterinary advice — talk to your vet about your dog's actual energy needs.

Other ways in

Prefer to start from a specific concern instead?

Every published rubric below uses the identical checks this matcher does — just pre-filtered to one situation, with the full criteria and source shown before any result.

Sensitive Stomachs Chicken Allergy Weight Management Puppies Large-Breed Puppies Low-Fat Grain-Free (Caution) Best Value Cost Calculator

Common questions

Breed-based food matching, honestly answered

How do you calculate my dog's daily calorie need from its breed?

We start from your dog's weight (defaulted to the midpoint of your breed's typical adult weight range, but always editable) and life stage to compute resting energy requirement (RER) and then daily energy requirement (DER) using standard veterinary formulas — the same math the cost calculator uses. We then apply an activity multiplier on top: about 0.9× for low-activity dogs, 1.0× for moderate, and 1.3× for high-activity or working dogs. This is a population-level estimate, not an individualized prescription — talk to your vet about your dog's actual energy needs.

Why does activity level change the calorie number so much?

A working or very active dog can burn 30-40% more than a sedentary dog of the same weight and life stage. We apply a coarse, defensible multiplier (0.9× low / 1.0× moderate / 1.3× high) on top of the standard life-stage DER formula. It changes your dog's computed daily kcal need directly, which changes every food's cost-per-day figure on this page.

What does the large-breed puppy calcium check do, and why can't I turn it off?

When your dog is a large or giant breed AND still a puppy, we automatically add our strictest, best-documented check: calcium disclosed within the AAFCO large-breed growth cap (1.2-1.8% dry-matter, Ca:P ratio ~1.1-1.4:1). Growing large-breed puppies fed too much calcium are at documented risk of skeletal developmental problems, so this check applies regardless of any other filters you've chosen. See our published large-breed-puppy rubric for the full citation.

Does my dog's breed determine which food is "best" for it?

Breed mainly sets a sensible starting weight, size class, and activity suggestion — all of which you can override. The actual matching runs on your dog's real weight, life stage, and any concerns you select, checked against each food's verified label data — exactly the same checks used on our best-for rubric pages and every product page's fit checklist. Two Labradors of different weights and ages can get different qualifying lists.

My dog's breed isn't in the list — what should I do?

Choose "Mixed / not sure" — it skips the breed-based weight guess and lets size class be computed directly from whatever weight you enter, using the same weight thresholds (toy under 12 lb, small 12-25 lb, medium 25-50 lb, large 50-90 lb, giant over 90 lb) that back every named breed in our dataset.